NEW YORK CITY WINTER JAZZFEST - January 10-11, 2014

I saw the line-up of artists and I knew I had to go. I had thought of the festival as primarily straight-ahead music (I think that's how it started?) but there was plenty of out/free/improv for the show this year. Here was a chance to experience a lot of music in a relatively compressed amount of time. It sounded intense--and it was. The arrangement of locations and musicians was quite clever, I thought, and once you get the hang of it, you can pretty much stay in the music for 6-8 hours. Sets started at about 6P and ended about 2P (varied by location); each from 45min-55min. I managed to see the following sets over the weekend:

Ches Smith Trio (w/Mat Maneri, Craig Taborn)

Nate Wooley's Seven Storey Mountain

Mary Halvorson Septet

Peter Brotzmann with Hamid Drake & Jason Adasiewicz

Darcy James Argue's Secret Society

Ralph Alessi Baida Quartet

Mark Helias Open Loose (Malaby and Rainey)

Henry Threadgill "Ensemble Double-Up"

Tony Malaby's Tamarindo (double bass version with Helias and William Parker, and Nasheet Waits)

Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog with Mary Halvorson

Matt Ship Trio

The set that really hit me the hardest was Nate Wooley's Seven Storey Mountain.  Here's the last section:

Brotzmann was great and I like the way he and Adasiewicz interact.  I only got half the set before my batteries died :-(

I finally got to see Henry Threadgill; the man is inspirational:  his feeling for the music, his pleasure and interest.  

Yes, it was a really good weekend, and I'm still catching up on my sleep!